


Two Steps Forward

by ofshadowsandstars



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (at least I hope), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Behavior, Emotional Baggage, Fix-It, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Rating May Change, amputee character, my boys get to take a fucking nap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-01-16 05:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18514498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofshadowsandstars/pseuds/ofshadowsandstars
Summary: It all happened so fast.It did. It really did. So fast that it was all a blur of adrenaline and screaming and a shower of gold against a black-and-white world.Everett wanted the bottle with the Sister. Quentin took a step towards him, away from the mirror. He agreed to hand it over. A second step, this time with his fingers curling behind its back.Let me heal you, he asked of the mirror.Yes.Here goes nothing.[Chapters 1&2 now edited and updated]





	1. It Happened.

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to Yasmin (angstics) for being a lovely and dedicated beta!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How things should have gone down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! This is my first fic for The Magicians. I've been watching it since there was only one season on Netflix, and I had so much anger and pain after 4x13 that I just had to change it.  
> Because the premise of this fic revolves around only changing a tiny thing, there will be a bit of Qualice at the beginning, but I didn't tag it because it won't last long. I don't fully know where this is going to go, so tags and rating are subject to change.
> 
> Chapter title from That Scene

It all happened so fast.

It did. It really did. So fast that it was all a blur of adrenaline and screaming and a shower of gold against a black-and-white world.

Everett wanted the bottle holding the Sister. Quentin took a step towards him, away from the mirror. He agreed to hand it over. A second step, this time with his fingers curling behind his back, preparing to do something as natural and crucial as breathing. _Let me heal you_ , he asked of the mirror.

**Yes.**

_Here goes nothing._

Penny for once didn’t question a direction from him, and dragged Alice away as Quentin turned and threw the bottle with every ounce of the lingering strength from the reservoir that still clung to his bones (he suspected far too much of the magic had gone just to helping his body recover from the months of mistreatment). He felt the mirror say **thank you** right as the strap of the bottle left his fingertips, and didn’t wait to see if it had worked.

If Everett got it, they would figure something out later. Right now, all Quentin had to do was get _home._

He sprinted towards the door, feeling the heat of the Mirror World’s shitty remix of his spell on the back of his neck. Alice, still fighting in Penny’s grasp, reached out, grabbed his arm, half-dragged him through the doorway. His bad arm, the one Martin Chatwin had mauled all those years ago, was the last thing to go through the door, and the pain that he felt as just three or four drops of magic hit his sweater and the back of his hand was even worse than any broken bone.

He screamed, but he kept running. Clinging desperately to Alice’s hand with the one that still felt anything other than agony, he ran. He could only stay conscious enough to keep his feet moving in one-two-one-two, in time with the pounding of his heart.

The world had gone fuzzy by the time they got back to their world, and Quentin was only dimly aware of the change back to color because everything was spinning and his arm was on fire and — _oh, this surface is nice and cool._

 

* * *

 

The last time that Eliot had gotten free of the Monster, it had just been as if he’d changed locations after being briefly blinded. This time was a little different. Coming back to his body, in this case, was not unlike being forced to wake up.

He’d been poking around the Monster’s memories whenever he could, but the thing had either lived a depressingly short life before Blackspire or had suffered some serious brain damage. On accident, he’d stumbled across its first meeting with Quentin. Standing next to Ora, trying not to look afraid, and doing a card trick.

_God, when was the last time he’d seen Quentin do a card trick?_  (He knew the answer, but it depended on how much you counted things that happened — yet never did — as existing within ‘time’.)

And then, right as Q went to stand up again, Eliot was faced with himself. His face was set in cold, hard determination as he raised his arm and fired the gun without an ounce of hesitation. As the Monster’s memory fell away, Eliot was plunged into darkness. The next thing he knew, there was sunlight in his eyes and he felt as if he’d been torn in half.

Oh, and Margo was yelling at him. She was being very colorful about it too. He took a moment to reckon with the pain and work his eyes open before he remembered how to form words in a way that would mean something to her. “Well, when you put it so sweetly, Bambi.”

He couldn’t really see her face, but he knew that the sound that came out of her mouth meant _pure joy._

It was hard to keep his eyes open after that, but he was aware of the brief rush of air that always came with Traveling, of being moved from one surface to another, of people bickering around him. Something pricked in his arm, and then the world went dark again.

For once, he didn’t open his eyes to the living room in the Cottage. To be quite honest, he couldn’t remember having dreamed at all.

 

* * *

 

Josh was still in Fillory, so it fell to Julia to stay with Margo. She remembered their first conversation, all those years ago. They’d both been young and naive. _You deserve no one._  Margo had seemed like a pillar of ice. Beautiful and cold. Now she looked like she was about to melt into a puddle on the floor.

Julia made a point not to say anything while she helped Margo clean the blood off of her hands, or when she popped her eye back into her head with trembling fingers. Julia did, however, link their arms together as they walked back to the Cottage, occasionally giving Margo’s arm a pat whenever her lip began to tremble.

Todd, for whatever reason, had continued to hold onto some of Eliot’s clothes and agreed to fetch some for Julia while she sat in Margo’s room, keeping Margo in her periphery as she changed out of her blood-stained clothes.

“It can’t be that easy,” Margo said, sitting down heavily next to Julia on the bed. “It never fucking is.”

Julia frowned. “We had to get hundreds of people on two planets to cast the Incorporate Bond at the exact same time. Eliot’s in critical condition. Q, Alice, and Penny are in the Mirror World. Kady is slowly _dying_ from exposure to magical radiation. We have no clue where the fuck Everett is. How is any of this _easy_?”

Margo shrugged. “It just...all slid into place. The Seam being in the Mirror World. Alice having an idea of where it is. Lipson being a fuckin’ trauma surgeon. Do you know how many of the professors here can do fuck all without magic?” Margo laughed bitterly. “We got everything we needed right when we needed it. How much longer ‘til the roof caves in and we’re stuck with another cosmic clusterfuck to clean up?”

Julia weighed her words. It was a valid question, but all she could come up with in response was “Murphy’s Law?”

The smile Margo gave was small, but genuine. A knock at the door came a few seconds later, and Margo stood up and opened it. She took the bundle of neatly-folded clothes with a small nod (not so much thanking him as acknowledging his presence) and left the room, gesturing for Julia to follow.

For all the disdain she had for her mortality, Julia really did appreciate the simple feeling of the sun on her face. She focused on that the whole walk back to the hospital wing, and was letting a warm sort of peacefulness overshadow her anxiety when she got back inside.

It went away, however, when she saw that Penny and Alice were back and sitting in the waiting area. _Without Q_. Her heart started to hammer in her chest and she tore away from Margo, her steps in time with her heartbeat. Penny was letting Alice cling to him — something she’d never seen either Penny do — while she cried. Julia could hear the click-click of Margo’s heels get louder and quicker behind her.

An all-too-familiar scream of pain pierced the air right as Julia stopped in front of Alice and Penny. Alice whimpered and clung tightly to Penny’s arm, but Julia couldn’t help but let out a small breath of relief.

If nothing else, he was alive.

 

* * *

 

 

“How are you feeling?” Lipson asked, looking over Eliot.

“Like someone gave me drugs,” he replied, only vaguely aware of the throbbing ache in his stomach.

She chuckled, putting whatever doohickey she’d been using back into her pocket. “That we did, Mister Waugh. Lots of drugs. Probably against better judgment, given how abused your liver likely is by now, but ambient is pretty low, so.” She shrugged and turned her head. “I’m all done here,” she said to someone he couldn’t see. “You can sit with him and be sentimental now.”

Lipson’s shoes clicked softly as she walked away. The sound held his attention enough that he was startled when someone grabbed his hand. He turned his head and saw a tearful Margo clutching his hand to her cheek. “Don’t you ever fucking do that again,” she ordered, though the effect was ruined slightly by the way she couldn’t stop smiling.

“You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific, Bambi,” he murmured, smiling back at her.

“Don’t do stupid things by yourself,” she clarified, letting go of the hand on her cheek to brush a lock of hair away from his forehead. “I know not doing stupid things as a whole would be stretch for you.”

“Well, I’m not going to fight you on that one.” _I’ve got a few stupid things to make up for to certain people. Alright, maybe just the one really, really stupid thing._

“If you’re going to apologize to the Monster for shooting it, you’re too late,” Margo said dryly. Eliot blinked at her a few times. He hadn’t realized he’d said that out loud.

“No, no. God, no. I meant —” he cut himself off and decided to change the subject. “What happened? To the Monster?”

“By some miracle, we won.”

Eliot looked away from Margo and saw Julia and Penny sitting towards the foot of his bed. Julia’s smile was bittersweet. “The Sister had me for a hot minute, but we got her and her brother out with some Fillorian magic, trapped them both with an Incorporate Bond, and banished them to a universe that….isn’t a universe, I think? It was weird and complicated but it looks like they’re gone.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Eliot asked, worried about what the answer could be.

Julia’s smile slipped off. “Kady spent some time in the Poison Room. She’s alive for now, but getting weaker. Josh is in Fillory with Fen, helping her hold the fort, so to speak.”

“And Q?” Eliot blurted, unable to hold it in anymore. “Where’s Quentin, is he okay?” He sounded desperate, he knew he did, but he really didn’t give a shit.

“Alice is with him,” Julia reassured him, though Eliot found _nothing_ about that reassuring. He would have bolted upright to demand answers if he’d had the mobility, but his face must have given the same effect as Julia realized she should explain. “We’re cool with Alice again, by the way. More often than not she’s been with Kady, trying to help hedges and generally save magic — long story — but she did help us plenty.”

_They still haven’t said anything about Q._  Panic began to rise in Eliot’s throat. “You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded her, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. “About Quentin.” Julia shared a look with Margo across the bed. Penny looked at his hands. “Well?” he half-yelled, a hundred possible deaths racing through his head.

Margo petted his cheek. “The entrance to the whateverthefuck universe we banished the terrible twins to was in the Mirror World. There was a hiccup in the plan, and Quentin had to cast, which is a big no-no in there. He managed to get out alive, but when he came back he was a little…” she looked at Penny. “How would you describe it?”

Penny looked up to meet Eliot’s eyes. “On fire,” he answered bluntly.

This time, Eliot _did_ bolt upright, and it hurt like a son of a bitch. “What do you mean, _on fire_?” he demanded, a hysterical edge to his voice.

“It was just his wooden shoulder,” Margo said, petting his hair and trying to get him to lie back. “He’s got some burns on his hand and arm, but he’s _alive,_  honey. Lipson gave him something for the pain and he’s sleeping it off now. He might have to get a touch-up from the centaurs, but he’ll be just fine.”

Eliot breathed a deep sigh of relief and flopped back onto the pillows as gently as he could. “When can I see him?” he asked. Exhaustion was starting to set back in, and it was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open by the second.

Margo gave him a warm smile. “As soon as you’re awake at the same time, El. I promise.”

Alice came by a few minutes later, but Eliot was fast asleep by then.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In terms of where to go from here, I'm going to have some more healing and lots of snuggles, but I'm considering following a larger plot using the 'what comes next' that Penny 40 gave Q (which never happens in this universe tyvm) mixed with what we heard about the future in The Side Effect.
> 
> To be honest, this fic is a catharsis for me more than anything, as I will cry if I think too hard about what went down on the show.


	2. Non-Linear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quentin's power nap continues. Alice has a chat with her mom. Penny gets bullied by the girls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some brief, semi-graphic depiction of Quentin's injury in this chapter. I didn't go into quite as much detail as was in my head, but I thought I should warn you.  
> And yes, I'm going to be doing my chapter summaries like s4 episode descriptions.

“Why the fuck does he have a wooden shoulder?” Penny yelled, in his God-I-Hate-Fillory voice (which, surprisingly — or maybe not — was exactly the same regardless of the timeline). “Who has a wooden shoulder? How the fuck was I supposed to know about that, huh? I’ve been in this timeline a _year_!”

“I still don’t fully understand how it works,” Quentin admitted, shooting an annoyed look at the Healing student poking at his now-charred shoulder. “It doesn’t affect my mobility, and other than not being able to feel anything, it doesn’t make a huge difference. I’m not sure why they had to only take a chunk of it instead of, like, the whole arm, or how they did it, but I was out for like two weeks, so I missed a lot. Not that anyone there was super helpful to begin with.” He made a face. “Or maybe they were, and I was just too depressed to be helped by anything they said.”

Margo smiled at him. “That's my Quentin,” she said proudly, sounding like a parent showing off their kindergartener’s artwork.

Aside from his wooden shoulder, Quentin’s left arm was being wrapped in lightly enchanted bandages down to his fingers, keeping the wounds covered so they could heal. Only a few of the magical embers had touched him, but the burns they left were wide and deep and shiny purple-black. They were gross, and they stung way worse than lemon on an open wound if anyone so much as breathed on them. Quentin hated it.

An IV with good old-fashioned painkillers was stuck in his right arm. Kady was sitting next to Quentin’s bed with a drip of her own hanging next to her. He was jealous of her being able to move around, but at the same time, he never wanted to move ever again so long as he lived.

Margo, who was sitting on the other side of Quentin’s bed and using his legs as a footrest, smirked at the photos she’d just gotten of the truly spectacular faces Penny had made while freaking out about Quentin’s wooden shoulder. Kady’s phone buzzed a few seconds later. She opened the message and let out an honest-to-God _giggle._  Getting burned by the hellish reflections of his own spell was turning out to be worth the pain in some pretty unexpected ways. Quentin said as much, and Kady smacked the back of his head. It stung, but he didn’t complain, knowing she could do much worse.

People were drifting in and out, sitting in comfortable silence as they waited for Eliot to be brought out of surgery. It might have been the drugs, but Quentin was weirdly confident that Eliot was going to be fine. With ambient so low, the bandages could only take so much pain, and after a few hours Quentin had to be sedated because he could barely keep conscious as it was.

While he slept, Eliot was wheeled into the room, still looking pale, but otherwise alive. They placed him in the bed next to Quentin, drawing a thin curtain to separate them. Margo made a face at it that clearly said she would have set it on fire if there’d been enough ambient.

 

* * *

 

“If you could walk me through it one more time,” Zelda requested, looking poised and dignified despite the lifelessness starting to creep into her skin and hair, slowly turning everything about her Library-grey. “What you saw happen to Everett?”

Penny sighed. “I didn’t see much, but fine. Once Quentin took down his wards and yelled at me mentally and verbally to get Alice the hell outta there, I was more focused on her. But I did see the mirror start to un-shatter, and then Quentin throwing the bottle and making a break for it. As soon as the magic fixed the mirror all the way, it basically jumped out and started coming towards us. It was like a-a tidal wave of sparks. Everett was right in front of the mirror, so from what I could tell, he was dust within seconds and Quentin —  _somehow_ —  managed to outrun it.

“Mostly, anyway. A few of the sparks hit him on the way out. He still had his wards down, so I could hear him just barely fighting through the pain. But as long as he stayed conscious and Alice didn’t say anything, I kept going. In the Mirror World, his arm was smoking a little, but when we landed back in our world, his shoulder burst into flames. He passed out on the floor and I Traveled him to the medical ward. The rest you know. _The end,_ ” Penny snapped. He was desperate to get away from Zelda and back to Julia. It was clear as day on his face and in everything about his body language. He did not give a single shit.

Zelda frowned, though it was as small and delicate as most other things she did. “If Everett had the power of the entire Reservoir, and you say this magic totally disintegrated him in seconds, how did Quentin come out so unscathed?”

“We don’t know that he did,” Kady reminded, jaw set tight. “He was only hit in a few places, sure, but the wounds from those little magical sparks are _huge_ in comparison. He had to be put under so they could remove his hoodie; it was half-melted to his arm. They’re nasty and ridiculously sensitive and we have no idea if they’ll actually heal. He’s alive, sure, but his arm is looking pretty dead. He could _lose_ his whole arm. Almost seventy percent of all spells have to be done two-handed. Q’s never exactly been a heavy-hitter, magically speaking—”

“Or generally speaking,” Penny added.

Kady glared at him. “— but he’d be nerfed pretty hard nonetheless. He’d basically be losing magic all over again.”

The close-lipped smile that Zelda gave Kady would have seemed condescending if they hadn’t been around her as much as they had. She leaned forward and rested her hand on top of Kady’s. “Before Alice stole and changed it, I read Quentin’s book. Cover to cover, and I took my time. Well, compared to my usual reading speed,” she amended, after receiving a skeptical eyebrow from Kady. “Things have changed since, obviously, but I do know what has motivated Quentin since he regained his identity and memories. What has kept him fighting and driven for all these months. And so, knowing what I do, I can tell you with the utmost certainty that Quentin Makepeace Coldwater could not care less about how much magic he can do once he has seen the fruits of his labors.”

Penny and Kady stood in silence for a long minute, taking in what Zelda had just said. Neither was particularly satisfied with her answer, but knew better than to ask for details about someone’s book. Instead, they just gaped at her and said, at the same time, in the same incredulous tone,

“His middle name is _Makepeace_?”

 

* * *

 

Margo had never particularly liked Professor Lipson. She liked her even less now, as she gave commentary while changing Quentin’s bandages. While Eliot was awake. With only a thin curtain separating them.

“God, could that look any grosser?” Lipson asked herself, in a voice she probably considered quiet.

Eliot’s grip on Margo’s hand turned painful, and she patted it gently, both to soothe him and to ask him to let go. He did, albeit somewhat reluctantly, and Margo could feel his eyes on her back as she peered around the curtain, fairy eye covered. To be fair to Lipson, it took a lot of self-restraint to keep Margo from having an audible reaction to the sight of Quentin’s arm.

What had originally been a few smallish burns on his arm and hand had turned into massive gooey, shiny, purple-black sores several inches in diameter, with the rest of his arm varying sickly shades of grey, green, and purple. It looked like it should have flies buzzing around it, or maybe maggots crawling all over. The only optimism Margo could find was in the fact that there didn’t appear to be any _smell._

Margo took her hand off of her fairy eye and nearly vomited all over her designer shoes. She could see the twisted magic of the Mirror World working under Quentin’s skin, systematically killing whatever tissue it encountered. It was trying to push its way up his arm and towards the rest of his body, but Q’s wooden shoulder, by some miracle, was keeping it limited to his arm. If asked to describe what it looked like, Margo wouldn’t have been able to find the words. All she could say was that Quentin’s arm was _dying._

“It could,” she told Lipson, forgetting Eliot was right there. “It could look so much worse,” she gasped, stumbling back behind the curtain once more and barely managing to sit down in the chair next to Eliot’s bed. She realized her mistake as soon as she looked up and saw her best friend’s face. He looked even more determined to stand up and tear apart anything between him and Quentin than he had when Margo had said that Alice was with him, or that he was on the other side of the curtain.

“Bambi,” he said, in a low voice that meant ‘tell me the truth or **so help me** ’.

Margo swallowed. “It’s bad, El,” she told him, cursing the slight quiver in her voice. “He’s-almost-definitely-going-to-lose-it bad.”

Lipson pulled back the curtain and glared at Margo. Eliot inhaled sharply. From where he was sitting, Eliot could see Quentin’s sleeping face and the charred surface of his burnt shoulder. Margo reached out and grabbed his hand.

“How the fuck did you know that before I did?” Lipson demanded, looking more irritated than anything.

Margo pointed with her free hand. “Fairy eye. I see all sorts of weird shit, including that if you don’t get rid of Quentin’s arm—”

“The magic will eat what’s left of it and try to move to the rest of his body. Yeah, I got that. His freaky shoulder should keep it at bay long enough for me to look into limb regrowth or magically enhanced prostheses, but I’d need to ask Quentin about what he wants to do next, and last time he was awake…”

“He passed out screaming after someone poked him too hard. Yeah, it took three people to keep this one,” she jerked her thumb at Eliot, “from jumping out of bed to see what was going on. Woke him up better than any alarm clock I’ve ever seen.”

Eliot wasn’t paying attention to Margo or Lipson, instead drinking in the sight of Quentin with a look that could only be described as _soft._  Margo finally began to admit to herself that she knew what it meant.

No one had mentioned the other Q/Alice _thing_ to Eliot, not while he was still grappling with them all being on the same side again, but Margo was starting to suspect she had another reason to dread that conversation.

Sure, Quentin had been introduced to her as _a prospie so fucking cute I can’t be even a little mad at Fogg for making me do this at the last minute_ , and then there’d been the way that Eliot had bonded to him in a way previously reserved for Margo, and just the general way they seemed to orbit each other in the grand scheme of things, and the Cock had apparently called them ‘brothers of the heart’, and…

Margo sometimes forgot that she was so far past emotionally constipated to the point that septic was a better word for it. For a long time, it had been a cornerstone for her every interaction, but now it was proving itself a bit detrimental.

Lipson rolled her eyes at Eliot and Margo before stepping back and pulling the curtain shut behind her. Eliot craned his neck, trying to make the view of Quentin last even just a half second longer. Something in his eyes made Margo’s heart clench. Part of her wanted to yell at Lipson to get rid of the curtain as soon as Quentin’s icky arm was covered again, but she decided to hold it off in favor of holding Eliot’s hand.

 

* * *

 

Alice, for once, didn’t hesitate to knock on the front door of her childhood home. Her mother pulled her inside and into a firm, warm hug without hesitation, despite the glass of wine in one hand. It was almost uncomfortable, how comfortable they were being around each other again.

“So, what brings you here today, honey?” Stephanie asked, silently offering Alice a glass of wine. It was tempting, but she refused. “Another spell? New way to fuck with the Library?”

Alice laughed nervously. “Well, it does have something to do with the Library. Just…maybe not what you’d think.” She met her mom’s eyes cautiously. Stephanie didn’t say anything. Alice cleared her throat. “So, um, how much do you know? About why the Library was so mad at me, that is.”

Stephanie looked a little surprised by the question. “To be honest, they told me close to nothing, aside from that you’d committed some crime against all of magic, apparently.” Alice winced. “So I’ll take that to mean that it wasn’t a lie?”

Alice hummed for a few seconds, trying to figure out where to start. “Okay, so, last year, me and Quentin and six others were on a quest to bring back magic. It’s a long, complicated story, but the short version is that we had to get seven keys and put them into a mechanism to re-open the flow of magic. We did it, obviously, but I-well, I-I sort of…deviated. From the plan. I made a deal with the Library to put the siphon on the flow as soon as it was open.” She met her mom’s eyes again and saw that she was frowning.

“Well, I can see how your friends would have the right to call you a dick, but I don’t get why the Library would be pissed.”

“That’s the thing. After what happened with Dad and the lamprey, I was just thinking back to my time as a niffin constantly, to the point that I got it into my head that magic was -” she hesitated. “That it was _bad._  That it had too much potential to do harm, and that because I had abused that power in ways I’ll never forgive myself for, no one should ever be allowed to have access to that potential ever again. So I destroyed the keys’ power. One of my friends was a goddess — even longer story — and was able to power up the keys and bring back magic. And as soon as it was back, the Library and the McAllistairs swooped in and put the siphon on magic.”

Stephanie took a long sip of wine and looked at Alice consideringly before speaking again. “So basically you went and stabbed everyone in the back.”

Alice made an annoyed sound. “If you want to look at it like that, yes.”

“Oh, honey, it’s not a criticism,” Stephanie reassured, smiling warmly and leaning forward to pat her hand. “It’s just nice to know that you got a thing or two from me.”

 

* * *

 

Margo, Julia, Kady, and Penny were in the living room in the Cottage, trying to think of ways to save Quentin’s arm. The frustration levels had gotten high pretty quickly.

“Okay, what if I just blip him to Chatwin’s Torrent?” Penny offered. “That should help, right?”

Margo made a face and shook her head. “Hate to break it to ya, 23, but the Torrent’s got a real moody guardian who fucks you up worse than before if you aren’t totally polite to him. 40 really pissed him off back in the day, so I’m gonna say it’s not a great bet. And we don’t know if the magic is tied to the water or the place, so even if Fen or Josh got a bucket of the water for us, there’s still a chance it’ll do jack squat. And the whole trip will have been a waste of time we don’t really have.”

Julia cleared her throat loudly. “Well, personally, I’m a fan of finding a way to get Q’s pain down so that he can be conscious enough to make his own fucking decisions about what gets done to his body.” She was speaking to the room at large, but glaring daggers at Penny as she said it. Kady, who was sitting next to her on the window seat, scooched a little closer and gave Penny a look that was almost challenging. Margo was way past ready for those three to get over themselves and bang. How a literal psychic could be so bad at reading a room was beyond —

Wait a minute. Penny’s _psychic._

Margo grabbed Penny’s arm, drawing his attention away from Julia. He looked between her eyes and her hand like he couldn’t decide which was more startling. “What you did with the Monster. When you went into his head and poked around his memories. Could you do that to Quentin? Talk to him about what’s going on, tell him the options — okay, what the fuck is that face you’re making?” she demanded, seeing the way Penny became very visibly uncomfortable. Julia and Kady’s malice from earlier was gone, replaced with concern.

“I _could_ do it,” Penny said. “I can’t speak for other me, but I try to stay out of Coldwater’s head as much as possible. It’s not exactly a pleasant experience.”

Kady rolled her eyes. “A guy astral projects into one sex dream and suddenly Quentin’s head is his psychic Vietnam.” Penny glowered at her. She shrugged. "I don't know what happened in your timeline, but you aren't denying it."

“Or, if you’d rather,” Julia began, voice deadly sweet, “we could remind you that the last time a choice like this had to be made, you totally forgot you were able to do this.”

Penny, to his credit, had the decency to look uncomfortable for being called out on his previous poor judgment. He knew better than to argue this one. “Alright, but y’all are buying me brain bleach afterward.”

 

* * *

 

Walking in on a sex dream would almost have been less weird.

Dream-Quentin was in Fillory, going by the clothes, working on what looked like a mosaic in front of a small cottage. A pretty, strawberry-blonde woman was standing a couple of yards from the edge of it, chopping vegetables. A little further away, among a table, a day bed, and a small garden, was Eliot, spinning in a circle with a hand over his eyes.

“Three, two, one! I’ll find you!” he cried playfully, tearing his hands away from his eyes and doing a half-turn with his usual flare. He stalked across the area, walking extra slowly and carefully surveying his surroundings. A little boy, no more than six, ran behind Eliot just as he turned his head towards him. His eyes lingered on the boy for a few seconds before he went back to his exaggerated sweeping gaze.

From where Penny was standing, he could see where the boy had hidden behind the day bed. He was grinning, clearly proud of himself, and barely containing his giggles.

“Have you seen Rupert running around?” Eliot asked. Quentin and the woman both looked up at him and shook their heads. The boy - Rupert, Penny assumed - let out the smallest squeak of a laugh.

Penny walked over to Quentin, leaving the dream characters to do as they pleased. “You know, at least your sex dreams made some kind of sense,” he announced, ignoring the way Quentin jumped at the sound of his voice. “I can’t tell what the fuck I just walked in on here.”

Quentin flushed slightly. He looked back towards where Eliot and the woman had been. They were gone now. Rupert too, probably. Quentin sighed and turned back to Penny. “If you’re bothering to come into my head, I’m guessing you don’t have enough time for me to even begin to explain. Not that you’d care, but.” He sighed again. “Alright, what’s the news?”

All those months, and it was still strange to see Quentin be so to-the-point. In this case, though, it was probably for the better. “How much do you remember?”

“A shit ton of pain in my arm, courtesy of casting in the Mirror World.”

Penny nodded. “Yeah. The wounds are bad, man, and they just keep getting worse. Margo and Lipson are both pretty sure you’re gonna have to lose it.”

Quentin frowned. “What does Margo? — right, fairy eye. Okay, continue.” He didn’t seem bothered.

Penny was taken aback. “Dude, I just told you that you’re going to _lose_ your _arm._  Which includes your hand. Which you need to cast. You should be freaking out way more than this.”

The frown came back, much more annoyed than it had been before. “Just tell me my options.”

Penny decided to just go with it. “Lipson’s doing some research. Regrowing whole limbs is pretty much impossible and takes way more magic than we have, but there are some pretty lifelike magical prosthetics. You’d be able to use it as if it were a normal arm. Casting would take some relearning, but it’d be better than nothing. Or you could just live with the stump. It’s up to you.”

Quentin nodded, weighing his options. After a moment, he asked, “There’s no chance of saving it?”

Penny shook his head. “Margo said it’s basically rotting.” Quentin grimaced. “Yeah, it’s real bad. And we don’t know how much longer your freaky shoulder is going to keep the magic from spreading to the rest of your body.”

“Okay.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair (it was back to its historical length in the dream). “Just…tell Lipson to do whatever she has to to get it off. We’ll go from there when I’m awake.”

It made sense. Penny nodded curtly. “Alright then. See you later. Assuming you don’t die, anyway.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “Thanks as always for the vote of confidence.”

“Yeah, yeah, go fuck yourself.”

“Likewise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quentin's dream from a deleted mosaic scene I found from [ on tumblr](https://highkingfen.tumblr.com/post/176745629676/eliot-and-rupert-playing-hide-and-seek-while).   
> "Prospie" is a term short for prospectus/prospective student.  
> Chapter title is a reference to the nature of recovery.


	3. Minor Mendings (Pt. I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fen visits the in-laws. Kady and Zelda do shots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated to fit any warnings relevant to this chapter.

Fen’s gleeful screech pulled Julia out from a doze quite abruptly. She’d been sitting on a sofa in the hospital wing of Brakebills, close enough to Eliot’s bed that she could see him, but a bit too far for casual conversation. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, Julia watched as Fen, dressed once more in the clothes of Fillorian royalty, threw her arms around Eliot’s neck and held him so tightly it looked almost painful. Her voice was a bit muffled, but it sounded like she was happy-crying.

“I’d get comfortable if I were you,” Margo told Eliot with a smirk, coming to stand at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips. “She cried on me for two hours when we thought you were dead.”

“It’s okay,” Eliot said, though he sounded a little short of breath. “I missed you too, Fen,” he told her, petting her hair. “Even if you did overthrow my Bambi.”

“Fucking Fillory and its freaky-ass anthropomorphized destiny-spewing animal people,” Margo grumbled, crossing her arms. At that, Julia smiled, stood up, and went to stand next to Margo.

“So if a questing creature told Fen she had to overthrow you and become High King, does that make her the first destined High King to not be from Earth?”

At that, Fen let go of Eliot, turned to Julia, and sat down on Eliot’s legs. Hard. He grunted at the impact and she sprung up, apologizing profusely as he waved her off. She sat down again, this time more careful of where she put her weight. She was staring off into space, eyes watering.

“I-I guess it does,” Fen said finally, sounding more than a little choked up. “I’d hadn’t thought of it like that. Well, shit. I was _destined_ to be _High King_.”

Margo sighed. “That’s probably all the lizard would have to say, knowing my luck.”

Fen looked at Margo, frowning. “You never got the lizard to talk? But all the talking animals are back to normal in Fillory.” Margo gave her a flat look and held up her wrist, showing off the brand that marked her as being banished from Fillory. Fen gulped, looking like she wanted the ground to swallow her whole. “Oh. Right. Sorry about that.”

“Margo is just giving you a hard time,” Eliot reassured, leaning forward to rub Fen’s shoulder reassuringly. She nodded and leaned into the touch, too absorbed in the comfort to notice the _don’t be fucking mean to my wife_ look that Eliot shot Margo. She just rolled her eyes at him.

Julia pulled out her phone and checked the time. “Q should be out of surgery in the next half hour,” she announced, trying to ignore the anxiety welling up in her throat.

Fen frowned and looked between Julia and Eliot. “Surgery? Wait-what happened to Quentin? I mean, I’m all for cutting people open, but that’s usually limited to enemies. What does he need it for? Is he going to be okay?” Fen’s voice got shakier and more panicked the more she talked. It was a pretty good reflection of how Julia felt inside.

Eliot was suddenly fascinated by the white sheets covering him from the waist down, so Margo sat down next to Fen and took her hand. Her grumpiness from before was gone, replaced with the sympathetic yet commanding presence that had likely been what made her High King. “While he was getting rid of the Monster, Quentin got hit with some nasty, fucked-up magic. It started out as a few small burns, but the magic was strong enough that it got worse and worse until it made rotting carcasses look attractive.” Julia and Eliot grimaced. Leave it to Margo to not mince words. “It’s only his arm, though, and it’s his arm that the centaurs fixed up after the first time we took on the Beast. The wood’s kept the magic from spreading, but at this point, his arm is a cause so lost it’s in the Bermuda fuckin’ Triangle. Our very best healer is amputating it right as we speak. With help from a carpenter, I’m pretty sure,” she added, squeezing Fen’s hand and flashing her a small smile.

Fen let out a hint of a laugh but was clearly still distressed. “But he’s going to be okay?” she asked again, looking at Julia with big, sad eyes.

“As far as we know,” Julia replied, voice catching ever so slightly in her throat. She’d gone to sleep because the fear and anxiety had been pushing her to the verge of tears, but it was back now, trying its damnedest to crush her chest. It must have shown on her face, because Fen gave her a sympathetic look, stood up, and wrapped her in a hug. Julia clung to her with a desperation she hadn’t realized she had, holding onto her like a lifeline as tears slipped from her eyes, accompanied by quiet sobs.

Lipson and a couple of Healing students wheeled Quentin into the room ten minutes later. A bright white stump poked out of the sleeve of his hospital gown. Julia vaguely registered Lipson’s words as she said the surgery went well. A few seconds later, the curtain separating Eliot and Quentin went flying across the room and through the window, metal rack and all.

 

* * *

 

“Supposedly, this is the emergency cure for exposure to the Poison Room,” Zelda said, putting two vials of a sludgy amber liquid on Fogg’s desk, between her and Kady. “I found the recipe while looking through Everett’s office.”

“There’s a chance that it could be a dummy,” Alice warned. “For all we know, it could just kill you faster and even more painfully.”

“I’d considered that,” Zelda agreed. “Which is why I’m going to take it first.”

“But if it kills you, who’s going to rebuild the Library?” Kady asked, confused. Zelda looked at Alice. Kady turned in her seat to look at Alice, eyes widened slightly. “You’re going to take over the Library?”

Alice crossed her arms and tossed her hair slightly. “I haven’t totally agreed to it yet, but I do want to get ambient up and figure out how to get the worms out of hedges. This seems like the best place to start.”

“I believe Alice could do quite a significant amount in terms of undoing Everett’s evils,” Zelda added. “I have the utmost confidence in her.”

Kady kept her gaze locked on Alice. “Have you seen the recipe for this supposed antidote?”

Alice nodded. “From what I can tell, it should do what it says it will. You’ll probably want to keep some Pepto on hand for a few days, but you won’t be dying anymore.”

“Good enough for me,” Kady declared, popping the cork off the vial closest to her and downing it as quickly as she could. She gagged but managed to keep it down. “God, that tasted horrible,” she said, standing up to go get water. When she came back, Zelda was just throwing back the last of the antidote, very obviously trying to downplay her disgust at the taste. Kady put a glass of water down in front of Zelda and continued chugging from the plastic water bottle in her other hand.

Her phone buzzed after a few more gulps. She pulled it out.

 **Jules:** **_Q out of surgery. All clear. Should wake up soon._ **

Kady smiled and showed the message to Alice, who let out a shuddering breath of relief. Grinning, she grabbed Kady’s hand and dragged her out the door and towards the hospital wing.

**Jules: _FYI,_** **_I also may have telekinetically broken a window_ **

 

* * *

 

For the first time in a long while, Quentin woke up blissfully warm and comfortable. The bright lights all around him didn’t seem harsh at all, and people’s voices seemed to just sort of float by. He drifted in and out of awareness for a while — how long it was, he couldn’t tell or care — before he finally opened his eyes to a world that seemed...concrete. Focused. Tangible. It was nice.

It was dark out — he could tell that much from the lack of light coming through the windows, the slightly dimmed overhead lights, and the way Julia and Fen were sleeping on top of each other on a sofa. Penny was dozed off in an armchair next to them, and Margo had appropriated a loveseat for herself. Further down the room, Alice and Kady appeared to have dropped off while researching at a table. Quentin smiled. It was quiet, and everyone was okay.

“ _God,_  I missed your smile.”

Quentin was still drowsy enough that he didn’t jump, but he was definitely startled by a familiar but unexpected voice coming from beside him. He turned his head to the right and saw that his hospital bed was pushed up against Eliot’s. Eliot, who was back and alive and in one piece. And awake. And smiling at Quentin. And holding his hand.

“Just that?” Quentin teased quietly, his voice a little raspy. “Nothing else about me?”

Eliot gave him a look that was somehow both unbearably fond and deadly serious. “Q, I missed every little thing about you. If I tried to name all of them, we’d be here for years. Decades, even.”

Quentin’s smile widened and tears began to swim in his eyes. “I was so scared I’d never see you again,” he confessed, squeezing Eliot’s hand to make sure it was _real_ _._  He blinked, and the tears fell down his cheeks. “It convinced me you were dead and I just — we almost — _shit_ I just missed you so fucking much.” It was hard to talk while holding back sobs, but Eliot shushed him and shifted himself closer, holding Quentin’s hand in both of his while he whispered soothingly.

He was probably a gross mix of tears and snot and red eyes and cheeks, Quentin realized after a few minutes. Self-conscious, he lifted his free hand to wipe at his face and —

Nothing happened.

Quentin froze. He slowly turned his head to the left, tuning out the sound of Eliot’s voice softly calling his name as he looked at where his left arm should have been. _That’s right,_ Quentin thought, remembering Penny interrupting his memory-dream, _I told them to get rid of it. Because there was no saving it._ There was a bandaged stump poking out the sleeve of the hospital gown he was in. They’d taken most of his arm, stopping a little more than halfway between his elbow and shoulder. _A transhumeral amputation,_  his brain supplied, providing squirreled-away knowledge from the time in middle school when one of his cousins got an infected cut and Quentin went on the equivalent of a WebMD spiral. He laughed internally. _Who’s wasted their time now, **mom?**_

“— kinda freaked out by the missing-arm thing, I think,” he heard Eliot say, as he dragged himself back to the present. “Or he’s super high on whatever drugs/magic Lipson gave him. Or both. Probably both.”

A hand landed on Quentin’s lower leg and he looked up. Julia was standing on his left, smiling at him a little nervously. “You doing alright, Q?” she asked. “You look a little freaked out.” She came closer until she was next to him and wiped at his cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater, just like she’d always done when they were kids.

Quentin smiled at her gratefully. “I guess I’d forgotten what I was waking up from,” he admitted, turning to look at Eliot and flash him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I was so focused on the pain being gone that I forgot what had to be done to get rid of it. Not to mention that Penny popped in while I was dreaming about Fillory, so there was kind of a lot going on.”

“Was it a good Fillory dream, at least?” Julia asked hopefully. “The only adjective Penny used was ‘weird’, but Penny hates Fillory, so…” Quentin couldn’t help but smile at the eagerness trying to break through Julia’s worry. Even though she might not show it often, she was still as enthusiastic about Fillory as she had been as a kid. If she hadn’t been possessed, she probably could’ve gotten the magical fucking flower to bloom even quicker than he had.

Quentin looked over at Eliot, who was looking at him with similar anticipation. He smiled. “It was a very good Fillory dream,” he said, sinking into the warm, happy feeling that blossomed in his chest. “Beautiful, really.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is being split into two parts, as the title shows. Part II isn't as wholesome as this one, I'm afraid, but as the title implies, I'm starting to tie up the loose ends we were left with after the finale. It was going to all be one chapter, but I wanted to leave y'all with a warm, fuzzy feeling.


	4. Minor Mendings (Pt II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margo takes the boys for a walk. Kady and Penny get drinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this has taken me way too long to get back to. I promised myself I was going to write over break, and then...didn't. Now I'm back at school and finally working on it again. Go figure. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Margo, regardless of what anyone said, was not, under any circumstances, _hovering_. She loved her boys dearly, but the fact of the matter was that they were both idiots who always needed her help sooner rather than later. Especially now that they were both recovering from injuries. 

The three of them were all out on a stroll together around campus, enjoying the sunshine, fresh air, and general pleasantness of not being dead. Eliot was walking at a reasonable and careful pace, thanks to his cane, but Quentin was paying far more attention to Eliot than to where he was going, and Margo really didn’t trust him to not trip and break his face, especially given that he now had only one hand to catch himself with.

“I never thought I’d miss being outdoors this much,” Eliot mused, tilting his face towards the sun. “I was pretty sure dear old dad had ruined it for me forever.”

“All it took was a homicidal, overgrown, incorporeal god-child possessing you,” Quentin noted, with a look that made it clear he was more than happy to refer to those events in the past tense. It was adorable. Margo wanted to strangle him.

“Well, we all gotta outgrow our pasts eventually,” Margo quipped, snaking an arm around Eliot’s. “Speaking of...” she looked to Quentin. “Has Alice made up her mind about the Library yet?” 

Quentin blinked at her for a moment, apparently having to reboot his brain to deal with someone changing the subject to Not Eliot.“Last I heard — which was like, two hours ago? — she and Zelda were kind of negotiating still. But it’s kind of slow going, since apparently the antidote she and Kady had to take for the Poison Room has some pretty gross side effects.”

Margo lifted her index finger in a way that said _now you listen to me, Coldwater._ “Nasty, yes,” she corrected. “But gross? Q, baby, that arm of yours rewrote my entire fucking definition of _gross_.” She shuddered.

“What arm?” Quentin asked, waving his stump with a small grin. He’d gotten the hang of it pretty quickly, and Eliot told him as much. Margo rolled her eyes as they started up with their googly eyes again.

“So it’s looking like she _is_ gonna help with the Library?” Margo asked loudly, snapping the boys out of their trance.

Quentin rebooted a little faster this time. “Yeah, looks like. Her priority is getting ambient up and getting the worms out of hedges.”

“I thought that was Kady’s thing,” Eliot commented, frowning. He was still getting caught up on everything that he’d missed.

“It’s both their thing,” Quentin explained. “Well, it’s slightly more Alice’s thing right now, since Kady is also on don’t-let-Julia-kill-Irene-McAllistair duty with Penny. Only, Julia is still pissed at Penny, so it’s mostly Kady.”

“Since when is Julia chomping at the bit for murder?” Margo asked, both impressed and offended that she hadn’t been invited. "I thought that was a shadeless thing."

“Since she got her magic back, decided she needed to  _do_ something, and remembered that the McAllistairs are still snorting the Fairy Queen while hedges are being sterilized. Not to mention the whole thing where the entire fucking family kept fairies as slaves for hundreds of years?”

Margo officially approved. “Remind me to tell her that she’s welcome to my axes whenever she’d like. No possession required.” Quentin gave her a flat look. She blew him a kiss. Eliot rolled his eyes at her fondly and detangled his arm from hers before sitting down on a stone bench, letting out a quiet, relieved sigh. He just needed a few minutes to rest, he reassured them. 

Margo put her hands on her hips and looked at Quentin. “So if Alice is going to be doing her Library reform, what does that mean for you two?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Eliot tense. Guilt tried to claw its way up her throat, but she shoved it down. She knew it was cruel. She really did. But she also knew that they had to be on the same page, and Quentin wasn’t pussy enough to tell this particular truth unprompted. Margo didn’t dare look at Eliot, though. She kept eye contact with Quentin, silently ordering him to get his shit together _or else._

Quentin stammered a little. Glanced down at his feet. Pushed a strand of hair behind his ear (tried to, anyway — it was still too short). “We, uh. We’re gonna talk about that tonight.”

“So you and Alice got back together.” Eliot wasn’t asking. He spoke in a tone that meant he was pushing all his feelings down as far as they would go, seeking to pretend that nothing bothered him. Large amounts of liquor and drugs usually came after the appearance of this tone. Both Quentin and Margo knew it all too well.

“I-kind of?” Quentin said, looking very much like he’d rather be talking about anything else. He wouldn’t look Eliot or Margo in the eye. “We-we’re _trying,_  I guess is the best word for it. Going slower than last time, but we’re…giving it a shot.” 

Something pained flashed across Eliot’s face; It looked somewhat like guilt. Margo could see the moment where he pushed it down, where he put up a stone wall. “Why the fuck not?” he asked, a bitter edge to his already clipped tone. He stood up more abruptly than he should have, but didn’t wince. “I’m tired; I’m going back to listen to Fen talk about animal politics until I fall asleep, seeing as I can’t do fun things right now.”

With that, he left, walking at a slightly faster pace than before, though his legs were so long that it made quite a difference. When Margo looked back at Quentin, his head was ducked in the way that would have hidden his face when his hair was longer and he was rubbing at his stump self-consciously. Margo tutted and smacked at his hand. Quentin gave her sad puppy eyes from behind his would-be hair curtain.

“You had surgery barely two days ago, Quentin. If you ruin Lipson’s work, she’s gonna have your head on a spike, and we all know you’re too cute for that,” she chastised, taking his chin in one hand and tipping his head up until he was looking her in the eye. “This was a freebie, Coldwater,” Margo warned. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on between you and Eliot, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that neither of you do, either. So. Be honest with yourself — and him, _and_ Alice — figure out your shit, and don’t ever expect me to do your emotional labor ever again. Capische?” Quentin grimaced, but nodded. Margo took her hand off his chin and patted him on the cheek. “That’s my Quentin.”

 

* * *

 

 

“You were raised by hedges, right?” Penny asked. “That’s why you care so much about them?”

Kady scoffed. “ _Or_ I could just care about them because they’re people. Did you ever think of that?”

He shrugged. “I did. Didn’t seem like the whole story. Tried to poke around, but you’re locked up tighter than the crown jewels.” Kady gaped at him, slightly taken aback at his casual admittance to having tried to get into her head. He raised his hands placatingly. “Dick move, I know, but…you mean something to Julia. And you mean the world to other me, so —” Kady glared at him and got up from the couch, making a beeline for the fridge, which had just been restocked with beer — “so sue me, but I wanted to get to know you a little bit. You weren’t at Brakebills in my timeline, and I figured out pretty quickly that you don’t like talking to me, so yeah, I tried to get into your head. I’m not proud of it.”

“And when that didn’t work?” Kady asked, popping the top off a beer and taking a long swig.

“I asked Julia.”

Kady nearly choked on her mouthful of beer. “And what did she tell you?” she asked, setting the bottle down on the kitchen island. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t anxious; there was a lot that Julia could have to say. 

“That you had every reason to never be kind to her, not with the way you met, and yet you two got to a place where she trusted you to be her heart. And then she told me to grow a pair and talk to you myself,” he added with a chuckle.

Kady managed to bark out a laugh around the emotion building in her throat. She took another swig of beer and set the bottle down on the island. She walked away from it, hands trembling slightly. “Would you like to see?” she asked him, trying to ignore the memory of the first time she’d let him — no, _her_ Penny — in. 

Penny looked very genuinely surprised. “You’d put down your wards?” She nodded. “Still avoiding talking to me, huh?” he asked, just a hint of teasing to his voice.

She crossed her arms and gave him an unimpressed look. “And yet here I am, prepared to tell you everything.” He studied her face for a moment. She uncrossed her arms, dropped them to her sides, and squared her shoulders. _You can’t hurt me,_  she tried to convey, as if the sound of his voice didn’t crush her heart — on a good day.

After a moment, Penny nodded. Kady took a deep breath and remembered what her mother had taught her all those years ago. _Like a garage door, Chickadee, and you’re standing inside the garage. Imagine it opening, rolling up steadily and letting in the light._ She saw the light coming through the now open space, and there was a silhouette standing right in front of her. _Penny._

In Brakebills South, when she’d let her Penny go through her head, she’d shown him relatively little. Growing up a hedge, having only her mom, and having to steal for Marina to keep her mom alive. Just the bare bones of the bitter loneliness that had been her life. This time, though, was completely different. She could feel Penny flipping through her memories with a speed comparable to that at which she’d seen Zelda speed-read through Everett’s book in the Poison Room. He was trying to get in and out as quickly as he could, rushing through levitated sex and Fogg’s eyes getting torn out and naked confessions and losing her mom and finding a semblance of family and standing in white as it was torn to pieces and drowning in drugs to try and _forget_ and everything that came after. Working with the Beast, trying to be Julia’s missing chip, watching the man she loved fade to nothing and be replaced by someone who was both him and never would be. One thing after another for what was both seconds and eons until the silhouette in the light disappeared and the garage door slammed shut. 

She opened her eyes with a gasp, stumbling backwards and nearly tipping over one of the island barstools. Penny was also breathing heavily, gripping the back of the couch for support. His eyes were wide and he seemed shaken by all that he’d seen — which, to be fair, included a demon pulling a magical tumor out of his chest and eating it. Kady couldn’t help but smirk a little as she went back for her beer. 23 had always been more quiet and collected than her Penny, speaking more softly but with more confidence. It was nice to see him rattled for once. 

Well, he hadn’t exactly been cool and collected when finding out about Quentin being part wood, but this was different. This wasn’t weird, otherworldly magical fuckery. This was _Kady,_  in her full truth, shaking the very ground beneath his feet. She may have felt like a side character in her own life, but she was a _badass_ one. Penny had every right to be in shock, and Kady had every reason to hold her head high.

She finished her beer and went upstairs to make sure Julia was actually napping like she said she’d be and not cooking up a murder plot. She appeared to be asleep, curled up on top of the covers. Her laptop was on the desk across the room, along with several of Marina’s books. Only her phone was on the bed with her, and it was closer to her feet. It buzzed and lit up with a message, but Julia remained unbothered.

 **HK Margo:** **_I hear you’re out for fairy-snorting slaver blood. Feel free to use Sorrow and Sorrow for any of your fucking-shit-up needs._ **

Kady rolled her eyes. Margo had been the one to suggest that they all take time to recover from the nonstop questing and fighting, but she wasn't one to back down from a fight, either. Still, Kady didn’t try to take Julia’s phone or delete the message. Instead, she took a photo of Julia’s sleeping form and sent it to Margo with the caption _your murder princess is a little distracted right now._  The reply was almost instant.

 **Margo:** **_She can’t be sleeping beauty forever._ **

Her next text consisted of about twenty knife emojis. Kady laughed under her breath, pocketed her phone, and went back into the living room. Penny had collected himself enough to grab a beer of his own and sit down on one of the barstools. He watched her as she came down the stairs and sat in the stool next to him. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly, not quite meeting her eyes. “For letting me in.” Kady shrugged. “No, I mean it. I saw how big of a deal that was for you, and you really didn’t have to let me do that, but you did. And I…” he trailed off and picked at the label on his beer bottle. “I think there might be a way to take down the McAllistairs for good and help hedges. If you’ll let me help.”

She knew the look in his eyes. He was nervous, worried about what she would say or think. He hadn’t had that look since he delivered the message from her Penny. She wasn’t sure if she found it warm or painful. Either way, she gave him a small smile and nodded. “Hit me.”

 

* * *

 

 

 _Stab wound or not,_  Eliot thought, _it wouldn’t be hard to destroy everything in this room._  And whatever couldn’t be smashed could be thrown into something else with enough force to make a very satisfying crash. Or he could just make the world reflect how he felt and put himself in the eye of a tornado made up of whatever his magic could grab.

Because of course. Of. Fucking. Course. This was what his life would always amount to. Close, but not quite. Too little, too late. 

_Would that be so crazy — if we gave it a shot?_

A dark laugh bubbled up in Eliot’s throat. He’d called Quentin naive, and yet he was the one who’d believed in a happily ever after. In the daring rescue, the dramatic declaration of love, and riding off into the sunset. It was so naive that even someone born yesterday would have laughed at him.

But then again, someone born yesterday hadn’t seen the beauty of all life. 

_They’d figured it out, not long after Rupert — “El, just call him Teddy.” “It’s the name of a fellow future High King; I’m using it.” — had turned ten. Thanks to Quentin’s genes, he went through his existential philosophy phase early._

_“How are you supposed to capture the beauty of all life with a bunch of tiles?” he’d asked, brow furrowed in concentration as he finished coloring the day’s mosaic design while Quentin and Eliot started putting the tiles back in their stacks. “Isn’t that kind of…Dad, what’s the word you used? Ebs- no, abs-something.”_

_“Abstract,” Eliot responded, shooting Rupert a proud smile for remembering a vocab word. “And yes, it is.”_

_“But if everyone has such different lives, why can it only be captured one way?”_

_“Because magic is a load of endless, nonsensical fuckery.” Quentin had scolded him for swearing, but Rupert laughed, and that outweighed it by far. If there was a way to capture that sound, we’d be out of here tomorrow, he’d said, the first time that he’d heard baby Rupert laugh. He stood by it._

_Rupert went quiet for several more minutes before speaking again. “How can anyone know the beauty of all life if they still have life to live?”_

_Quentin and Eliot had both frozen at that. They met each other’s eyes across the mosaic and finally, finally, understood._ We’re going to die here, and it will have been worth it. _They also understood that they couldn’t tell Rupert that. Instead, they gave him a half-answer._

_“Some people die young and still manage to have lived full lives,” Quentin had explained, coming to sit down next to his son. “Others die old and with a million regrets. Living a full life and seeing its beauty…it isn’t about time, buddy. It’s about experience. It’s about giving it your best and not being afraid to be happy.”_

_“But the puzzle demands tiles, so we have to multitask,” Eliot added, halfheartedly straightening a stack of tiles with his foot. Rupert had laughed again._

In the days after remembering the life that wasn’t, Eliot had asked Margo about how Jane Chatwin had gotten the key in the books. She’d been too busy to give him a full answer, but said all she could remember was that it had been found by a really old man, who gave it to her somewhat reluctantly. Jane had been in a rush, and had come back a little while later to properly thank the old man, but she was too late, according to the son. Margo then had reminded Eliot that she'd rather not think about that story too much, as it ended with her digging up a headless corpse. He let her be.

Still, it raised the question of whether or not Q and Rupert had been the men in the book. If something that happened in (what Eliot referred to as) Timeline 40.5 had been what powered the magic that had allowed them to live 40 different lives that never were, then could anyone really say it didn’t happen? Eliot let himself ponder on that question for about twelve minutes before giving up and accepting that time travel paradoxes were the biggest migraine ever.

And yet, somehow, Eliot’s heart was hurting worse than any migraine ever could. He’d tried to curl up into a ball and disappear into his hospital bed, but failed miserably thanks to the stitches in his stomach. Plan B, which was currently in action, involved staring into space and calling himself a total idiot in as many ways as he could imagine. Internally, of course. The last thing he needed was to give people another reason to fret over him. Not that anyone was really around to fret over him, thanks to his rapid departure from Q and Margo. 

It wasn’t running away, he told himself, so many times he nearly believed it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought, or come talk to me on [ tumblr ](https://quentinwiththegoodhair.tumblr.com).

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at [ quentinwiththegoodhair](http://quentinwiththegoodhair.tumblr.com)


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